Better
by toastea
Summary: Mama Temari makes everything better.


Shikadai is two when he accidentally falls off a chair and lands on the floor head first.

The silence of the house is pierced with the wails of a toddler and Temari, alarmed, nearly throws the dish she has prepared for lunch and dashes toward the living room to check on her son. She finds him lying on his back on the floor, his face scrunched up in pain. She hurries over to the boy and picks him up, bouncing him on her hip in an attempt to calm him down.

"What happened," she asks her son, voice laced with concern. The boy looks at her with teary eyes.

"Mama, hurt here," Shikadai explains, a hand cradling the side of his head. Temari lifts a hand to his head and sure enough, she can feel a small bump where her son's hand has previously been. She scans the scene in front of her: a chair toppled over, and Shikadai's bottle lying on the floor at the far end of the room.

"Did you fall off the chair," she asks him and he nods in response, a whimper escaping his lips.

"Hurt here," he repeats as the whimpers grow into sobs once more.

She dashes off for the fridge to get an ice pack. She grabs a clean cloth from the cupboard and wraps the pack in it before gently placing it on Shikadai's injury.

Shikadai shudders a bit upon contact. "Cold, mama," he complains, craning his neck away from the ice pack, a hand shooing Temari's arm. His cries turn a few decibels higher when Temari successfully situates the ice pack on the bump. Feeling all too helpless about her son's pain, she gently sways from side to side in an attempt to ease her son's discomfort.

"I know it's cold, honey, but this will help the boo-boo get better," she explains.

Shikadai has finally calmed down by the time Temari removes the ice pack from his head and throws it onto the kitchen counter.

"How does it feel now," Temari asks her son. He lifts his head from his mother's chest to look at her. He cradles the bruise with one hand, patting it gently to see if the ice pack did any good. He winces a bit and pouts at her. "Hurt still."

Temari smiles at her son, leans down, and kisses the bump.

"Better?"

Shikadai nods and beams a small smile at her before burying his face against Temari's chest once again.

—-

Shikadai is 10 when he comes home from training with a large, bloody cut on his left cheek. He attempts to dash from the front door straight to his room to avoid his mother whom he knows is in the living room busy with paperwork. Before he can run past her, she whips her head up fast enough to notice the red streak on his son's face.

"What's that," she asks, stopping Shikadai on his tracks.

He lifts a hand to cup his injured cheek, a useless attempt, he knows, to conceal the painful cut but he tries anyway. "It's nothing, mom," he says. "Really." Sometimes, he wonders how he can be so stupid.

Temari abandons the document she has been reading for the past hour and hurries over to her child, yanking his hand away to reveal the injury. "It's bleeding," she says, a hand lifting his head and angling it to take a closer look at the cut. "The cut's not deep enough for stitches. Nothing serious, but it's gonna sting. We need to clean it up before it gets infected, though." Shikadai can't help but frown.

He watches her mother disappear from the room and reappear with a medical kit in hand. She motions him over to sit on the couch.

"I miscalculated and barely dodged a kunai," he explains as his mother starts dabbing alcohol-soaked cotton around the wound to get rid of the blood that has caked on his face.

"Don't worry about it. These things happen to ninja all the time. Be more careful next time, okay?"

He manages a small nod.

"You'll have to visit aunt Ino after this, though," she adds. "So she can heal it nicely… unless you want a scar."

"Scars are cool," he says. "Grandpa had two, hadn't he?"

Temari snorts. "Still, promise me you'll go visit her anyway."

"'Kay."

They are silent as Temari applies antiseptic on the opening and finishes off by covering the wound with a long strip of bandaid.

"There," she says, satisfied with her handy work.

Shikadai runs a finger along the length of the band-aid. He shoots his mother a frown. "It still stings, though," he complains.

Temari rolls her eyes and snorts. She gently plants a kiss on his covered injury.

"Better?"

Shikadai scowls at her. "Mom, I'm too old for kisses, don't you think?"

Temari sighs and busies herself with fixing the kit.

"Whatever you say."

Shikadai heads for his room cupping his cheek and smiling as he starts to feel the pain subside.


End file.
